Recently, VLSI Research, a US semiconductor industry research company, released the ranking of global semiconductor manufacturing equipment manufacturers in 2018.
(Source: VLSI Research Unit: Million US dollars)
From the list, Applied Materials in the United States still tops the list, with sales in 2018 increasing by 6.5% from 2017 to $14 billion.
The second place is ASML, which specializes in lithography. Its performance in 2018 is gratifying. Compared with 2017, it has increased by 30%. The total amount has exceeded 12 billion US dollars, and the “fall” of the materials has been greatly reduced. Due to the high price of EUV lithography, it is expected that ASML's future performance will continue to increase, or it is expected to take away the chief throne of the company.
TEL ranked 4th in 2017, due to a growth rate of 25%, and in 2018, Lam Research, which ranked third in 2017 with a very small gap, became a probe. The top four companies' total sales were twice as large as the total number of companies in the future, and the equipment industry concentrated trend.
From the list, Japanese manufacturers account for seven, including Tokyo Electronics, Advantest Test, SCREEN, and KOKUSAI ELECTRIC. Relatively speaking, there are 4 US manufacturers, 3 European manufacturers, and 1 in China and South Korea. It can be said that the strength of Japanese companies in the semiconductor equipment industry is eye-catching.
The overall performance of US semiconductor equipment manufacturers is clearly affected by the US embargo. As a result, Chinese companies are in trouble, and the growth momentum of US equipment companies is being squeezed. In the Top 15 semiconductor manufacturers, the growth rate of Japanese companies exceeded the industry average growth rate of 15.5%, while the growth rates of the four US companies were below average. For example, the growth rate of materials was only 6.5%. sharp contrast.
In addition, Top15's total sales in 2018 increased by 17.8% from 2017 to US$67.07 billion. It is predicted that the total sales of the semiconductor equipment industry will increase by 15.5% from 2017 to 81.14 billion US dollars.
For the equipment industry trend in 2019, it seems to be pessimistic. According to SEMI, the equipment invested by semiconductor manufacturers in the previous process will be affected by the collapse of storage semiconductor foam, which is 14% lower than that of 2018 to 53 billion US dollars. Semiconductor equipment companies related to the previous process have also lowered their performance forecasts.
